


Fragile

by amaira



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Coping with Death, Friendship, Gen, Internal Conflict, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Pidge | Katie Holt, POV Shiro (Voltron), Season/Series 01, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, everyone is stressed, mostly comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19288207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaira/pseuds/amaira
Summary: Set during VLD Season 1.Pidge is inexperienced with death. But she's just killed Haxus, however indirectly. And she's still no closer to finding her family.Shiro is very experienced with death. He's one crack away from breaking, but he can't let that happen. Everyone else is counting on him, even if he doesn't deserve that trust.They aren't much on their own, but they can be there for each other.





	Fragile

**Author's Note:**

> Curious what my older writing looked like? Here you go.
> 
> This was originally part of an unfinished, abandoned series-rewrite project that I wrote at least two years ago, long before I even thought of any of my other fics here. But it was the first VLD fanfic I wrote, and it was what got me back into writing after many years of creative hibernation. For that, it will always hold a special place in my WIP folder.

Pidge is inexperienced with death.

She’s never killed someone, never watched someone die, never contributed to their death, until now.

Pidge lies flat on her back, on her bed, staring at the ceiling in her room.

Rover is gone. His final chirp as he deactivated himself to save her plays over and over in her head, along with the terrified scream Haxus bellowed when he realized he was falling to his death.

Pidge rolls onto her side and curls her hands over her ears, as if that will help.

She just killed someone today. Sure, she might not have kicked him down that drop herself, but she definitely tripped him towards the edge of the platform, and it wasn’t an accident.

She did that. On purpose. She meant to kill him.

She’s never killed anyone before now. And it was... frighteningly easy to do. Haxus was cruel, and he must have caused immense pain to others throughout the universe, and it’s probably better that he’s gone, but...

A knock on her door manages to startle away the coming tears, and she jerks upright.

“Come in!” she says, and thanks everything she can think of that it doesn’t come out as a sniffle.

Shiro is standing there, a soft and proud smile on his face, and that’s it. She breaks down.

“Pidge? What’s wrong?” He crosses the room in two steps, crunching something under his boots, and kneels in front of her. She can’t help but flinch when he rests his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, look at me.”

She sniffles in reply. He gently cups her chin and lifts her eyes to his. God, he looks so concerned. She sniffles again.

“I... I killed someone. I’m a murderer.”

He sighs and pulls her into his arms. “It’s an awful feeling, isn’t it?”

That short-circuits her misery process, and she jerks back and gapes at him.

“You...?”

He nods and looks just awful. “We often fought to the death in the Arena.”

“How? You’re not like that at all!” A thumb brushes over the tear-tracks on her right cheek. She ducks her head again, embarrassed by her thoughtless question. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you don’t think of me as a murderer.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but she’s comforted by the effort anyway.

“It was just... so easy. I didn’t even think about it. I’m so scared, Shiro. I don’t want to be like one of them.”

His breath hitches. “I know exactly how you feel.” Then he gives her that proud look again and she has no idea what he’s so proud of, but she nods anyway. “You value the lives of others. Hold onto that.”

“I will.”

“And always remember who you are inside, Katie.”

She can’t help but chuckle, even though it’s not funny. “As long as you do the same, Takashi.”

“I’ll do my best.” Now he looks like he’s about to cry, too.

The silence is companionable and awkward while they both compose themselves. Pidge recovers first.

“Did you need me for something? You came here and I just...”

The bed dips just a little bit as he sits next to her and smiles. “I wanted to tell you how proud I am of how well you handled yourself today. All of it.”

She draws her knees up to her chest. “I’m probably going to have nightmares of Sendak torturing you. I was ready to kill him, too. I mean, I had to protect you somehow, and if Allura hadn’t figured out how to trap him I probably would have, and that probably makes me some kind of awful monster but – but he was hurting you and...” she trails off in a shuddering huff and slumps over her legs.

“I’ll probably have nightmares about it, too.” He rubs her back, and she feels like a selfish asshole for making this about her issues when he was the one Sendak tortured. “Unfortunately, we’re in the middle of a war, and sometimes you have to lose people, and sometimes you have to kill people.”

The rest of his statement, that she will likely have to kill again, goes unsaid, but she hears it all the same. Her entire body shakes with a shudder, only steadied by Shiro’s warm hand on her shoulders. He’s been through things she can’t imagine, and he’s more composed and confident than anyone else in this Castle.

“How do you do it?”

He goes tense. “Do what?”

“You’re just so...” she stammers, waving her hands in front of her in a vaguely human shape, “perfect. I don’t know how you do it.”

“I promise you, I am not perfect,” he replies with a soft laugh.

Her face flushes. “I meant how you can cope with all this so easily.”

Really, though, he is perfect. Perfect leader, perfect teammate, perfect friend.... Shiro’s hand pauses. Pidge spares a glance at him, looking away just as quickly. He’s tense, his mind clearly elsewhere.

Yep, she’s an asshole, asking personal questions and prying and not knowing when to just read the signs and shut up.

“I’m sorry, Shiro,” she murmurs into her knees.

“It’s alright. I, uh... I don’t know.” He slouches so his head is level with hers. “You just do what you need to do. Try to survive, try to make things right.”

She sighs, but it comes out like a huff, and Shiro chuckles.

“Katie, I know you can do it. You already are. It’s probably your biggest strength.”

“Hm?” She straightens and turns to him. His smile is real, honest, and warms her to her core.

“You never gave up on your family, and look how far you’ve come to find them. I told you they’d be proud of you, and I meant it.” He pulls her into a one-armed hug, then stands to leave. He pauses at the door and looks back. “I’m proud of you, too.”

******

It’s been a shit show of a day.

Pidge growls and focuses on her laptop screen as much as she can. There has to be something in this data from Sendak that she can parse. Of course, it would be easier if she had access to his full memories rather than the fragmented, half-downloaded version the pod extracted before Shiro –

There’s no easy way for her to finish that thought. He looked liked he’d been to hell and back.

With a sigh, she slumps over and pushes her laptop aside.

Pidge fights back her own guilt as she makes her way to Shiro’s room. Wasn’t she supposed to be the brains of the team? Shouldn’t she have known that the Galran crystal could have lingering negative effects on the Castleship? Shouldn’t she have known better than to leave Shiro alone with Sendak?

Well, now it’s her time to support him. Even if it’s a little later than she should have.

His door is open, so she pokes her head in his room and calls out his name. Whatever she expects from his reply, it definitely isn’t a terrified yelp, but that’s what she gets.

He’s even more of a wreck now, crouched and hyperventilating on the floor.

“Shiro? Are you okay? Shiro it’s me, Pidge,” she croons, approaching him slowly, as if he might lash out like a scared, wounded animal.

He does.

His head whips up and his right arm snaps out to the side, glowing purple.

“S-Shiro...?” Pidge squeaks, backing slowly toward the door, which decides this is the perfect time to close.

The sudden hiss of the latching mechanism is the final straw to setting off Shiro. She screams and cowers as he lunges forward, curling her arms up in front of her face as if they’ll block his blows.

Instead of losing her limbs to the searing slice of his energy blade hand, a flesh and blood one grips her collar and shoves her hard into the wall. Lights dance behind her eyes, tracing the pain through her skull, and she gasps.

The purple glow seeping through her eyelids fades.

“Matt?”

Her eyes flutter open.

“Pidge! Pidge, oh my – are you – Pidge, I’m so sorry.”

Shiro recoils from her, glancing between his hand and her face. He looks so distraught, so ashamed, that tears well up in Pidge’s eyes.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” she chokes out. “I was just worried, after you were so upset earlier today, and – oof!”

Her rapidly accelerating mouth is muffled by Shiro’s chest as he pulls her into his arms. He’s still hyperventilating. He’s still stressed. He’s still tense.

“Pidge, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” His voice breaks on the last word.

She just wraps her arms around him and hugs him until he relaxes.

******

They do find useful information in Sendak’s memories, and immediately get to work putting it to use.

Shiro is a damn slave driver now, convinced that they all need to train before they try to infiltrate the newly discovered base, and Pidge kind of hates him for it.

She’s much better suited to hacking and coding and other tech things. But, well... she silently concedes that she won’t always be able to hack her way out of a bad situation, because tech skill didn’t do anything to help her dad and brother, and...

Pidge trudges to the Training Deck. She’s not looking forward to this at all.

Shiro smiles at her as she enters and takes her usual place next to Hunk. She’s the last to arrive, and the pointed looks from the other Paladins only make this all worse. She stumbles through the usual drills, half-heartedly dodging the gladiator drones and letting the rest of the team handle it. They’re much better at combat anyway.

She’s so distracted that she completely misses the call for one on one sparring.

Keith’s strike knocks her straight to the ground. She coughs and gasps, catching her breath after having the wind knocked out of her.

“What the hell, Keith?”

“If you’re going to slack off, why are you even here?” Keith snarls at her.

“Keith!” Shiro snaps.

He is undeterred, whirling on Shiro and flicking a hand in Pidge’s direction. “Well look at her! She just avoided all of the gladiator bots and let everyone else take the hits! Some teammate she is.”

“There’s a better way to handle this, Keith. And Pidge,” he starts, clearly winding up to some long lecture.

Pidge doesn’t care about lectures right now. She cares about proving a damn point.

“Keith!” Pidge barks, interrupting Shiro and not feeling the slightest bit bad about it. She turns to Keith and flings her arms out, the taunt clear in every inch of her body. “I’m here, even though I don’t want to be. Doesn’t that count for something?”

He glares at her, hands clenching and unclenching. “Just showing up doesn’t mean shit. You can’t stand around in the back and let everyone else fight for you.”

“You want a fight? Let’s fight.”

“Pidge, this isn’t a game,” Shiro admonishes, stepping towards them.

“Fuck off, Shiro.”

“Hey! Don’t talk to Shiro like that!” Keith snaps, and takes a threatening step towards her.

Pidge leaps at him with a roar, tackling him to the ground. His fist slams into her ribs as he tosses her off of him. She’s barely able to get her feet under her before his own foot flies into her shoulder, sending her sprawling again.

Somewhere behind them, Shiro shouts their names over Lance and Hunk’s indistinct yells, but Pidge can’t hear anything beyond the rush of blood in her ears and her own labored breaths as she scrambles off her stomach and swings her own foot right into Keith’s head.

He staggers back, but he’s still standing. Then he charges at her again, fists flying.

She ducks and twists away in one painful motion. But, no, Keith isn’t there.

“Keith, that’s enough!” Shiro yells, and when Pidge looks, she sees Keith struggling against Shiro’s hold.

She hauls herself up, coughs, and tastes blood. She narrows her eyes at Shiro. “Have I satisfied your desire for physical exercise yet, so I can go back to my laptop and actually contribute to the team in a meaningful way?”

“We still have training left. Pidge, you really do need to stick around for the rest of this.”

Pidge lets out a groan. “Seriously? I’m done! Okay? I’m going to go analyze some more data,” she snaps, whipping her hands towards the door, “because I’m actually good at that, and it actually makes a difference when I do it well. And if you have a problem with that, you can do the dirty work next time we need to hack a ship or decode a transmission.”

“No.” He crosses his arms and glowers. “You are part of this team, and so you need to be part of the team training.”

Her brows drop low into a glare. “I thought you said that being a team meant no one was forced into it.” She winces inside as she realizes that her words imply far more than she meant, but she’s too irritated to back down now.

“So are you going to leave to try to find your family after all?” Keith spits out at her. And, god, he looks so betrayed, so lost, but she can’t stop the words leaving her mouth.

“I don’t expect you to understand. Unlike you, I have a family to find.”

The silence that follows could suffocate her. Shiro bristles. Keith’s eyes open wide and he takes a step back. Lance and Hunk share a nervous look. No one says anything, and she scrambles for a decent exit to this conversation.

“I’ll be in the lab, if you need me.” She turns to leave, only for Shiro to catch her arm.

“Listen, Pidge,” he enunciates, and it’s just like when her parents scolded her for misbehaving as a kid, and the fucking gall of him, to talk like he’s – like her father. Angry tears well up, and she yanks her arm free and spins to face him.

“You’re not my dad, so stop acting like him!”

Her words stun everyone – even Coran visibly stiffens, despite not being a part of this – and Shiro’s face darkens to match her own.

“And it’s a good thing I’m not, because I’d hate for him to see you behaving like this!”

Her heart stops and her blood runs cold. “Don’t,” she starts, voice shaking, slowly crescendoing into a roar, “don’t you dare presume to speak for him! Don’t you dare try to tell me what he would think of me, as if you know him better! And don’t you ever try to use my family to shame me!” Her voice drops again, and she knows the words she says are unspeakably cruel, but she can’t help but let them fall. “Because you haven’t done shit to try to find them since we got here, so clearly you don’t care. Maybe you never did.”

She stands at attention and stares him down, studying his face as the anger fades. His eyebrows pull back and up. The lines around his nose relax, and his nostrils lose their flare. His jaw unclenches, then falls slightly slack as the line of his mouth flattens.

“Pidge, I...”

Tears start to gather in his eyes, too.

She turns on her heel and storms out.

It’s not until she reaches her desk that she lets herself cry, slumping over her desk with deep, aching sobs. Angry sobs at Shiro, at Keith, at training, at her family, but mostly at herself.

Her dad really would be ashamed to see her acting like this.

Shiro didn’t deserve anything she said to him. Keith, well... he probably didn’t either.

“Pidge?” Hunk’s voice is right next to her.

She squeaks and whips her head up so fast her chair rocks back, and she slaps her hands onto the desk to steady it.

“Hunk!” Pidge yelps. “What – what did you need?” She rubs her hands over her eyes, as if that’ll help.

He gives her a sad smile and pulls her into a hug. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. You know we’re all here for you, right?”

She huffs. “Sure. Especially Keith and Shiro.” Her voice catches, and she chokes back a sob. “God, Hunk, I’m sorry. I’m such an asshole. I can’t believe what I said to them.”

His hands rub up and down her back, and she winces when he presses too hard on her ribs where Keith kicked her.

“Well, it wasn’t... Okay yeah, it was pretty bad.” He glances down at her, face the picture of concern. “What got into you there?”

Fear? Loneliness? Rage? Keith was a convenient target for her anger? She needed someone to blame for her family’s situation, and Shiro was the closest to that?

“I don’t know,” she croaks out. “I just... I don’t know.”

Her family is out there somewhere, and her search algorithms haven’t turned up anything useful. They’re probably scared and lonely, if they’re even alive.

And there’s nothing she can do to help them.

******

Shiro can’t sleep.

The Ghost of Nightmares Future haunts him, poised just beyond his peripheral vision, waiting to strike the moment he lets his eyes close. Echoes of Matt’s cry when Shiro smashed his leg. Blurry after-images of Commander Holt’s face as he was hauled off with some other group of prisoners. Some awful grinding sound that he definitely doesn’t want to identify.

He rolls over and pinches the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He needs something to distract him.

All he gets now is the look on Pidge’s face as he used her father as some kind of tool to rein in her behavior.

She spent the entire afternoon avoiding him after their blow-up in the Training Deck. She’s just a scared kid, with more than enough to worry about without him twisting the knife. She needs support, not condemnation.

He groans. He won’t get any sleep until he can clear the air between them.

Shiro feels awful the entire walk to Pidge’s room. He shouldn’t be leaning on her like this. But, well, she’s the only one who has seen what a wreck he is, and she’s the most likely to be awake this late.

Her door is closed, though, with no tendrils of light streaming under it into the hallway. She might actually be asleep.

His traitorous hand – the real one, even – knocks on her door anyway.

A minute later, a bleary-eyed Pidge answers. She takes one look at his face and pulls him into the doorway.

“Just say it,” she grumbles. Her eyes have the faintest shadow of puffiness – of past tears. He’s done this to her. Her head ducks down and she braces herself for a lecture.

He doesn’t miss her flinch as he rests his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier, Pidge.”

She nods her head, then, after a moment, throws herself against his chest and hugs him.

“I’m sorry, too. I was such a jerk, and I don’t even know why I said those things, and... and I....” A shaky breath interrupts her rant, and Shiro tightens his arms around her.

“It’s okay,” he soothes.

They stand there for a few minutes, Pidge trying very hard not to cry, Shiro trying very hard to make her feel better.

“So,” she starts, with a hiccup, “what has you up this late?”

Shiro doesn’t want to tell her and ruin her evening any further. After a moment, she leans back from the hug, studying his face. Then she leads him the rest of the way into her room.

It’s a mess. He can barely see the floor beneath the disassembled electronics and... various other things he doesn’t even recognize. Was it this messy last time he visited Pidge?

She glides over it all, stepping in the few clear spots without a glance.

“You should really clean this up, Pidge.”

She scoffs and raises an eyebrow at him. “Yes, mom.” Then she shoves a few things off her bed and pats a spot next to her.

Only now does he notice that she’s only wearing underwear and a baggy white shirt. He’s sure his face is white as a sheet, but she just shrugs.

“You gonna try to tell me you sleep in that, Shiro?”

He sputters, because he does sleep in it. She laughs, her goofy grin splitting her face in half.

“Come on. Sit down and tell Doctor Pidge all about it.”

His legs obey of their own accord, and Shiro finds himself sitting at the foot of the bed, his back to Pidge. He stares at his hands, clasped in his lap. He’s weirdly lightheaded. His heart beats a bit out of control as he tests the question on his tongue, and his blood becomes fire as he spits it out.

“Do you really think a monster like me can be a Voltron Paladin?”

It’s not that Pidge is doing much of anything before those words leave his mouth, but now she’s so still he can feel it.

“Why would you say something like that, Shiro? Why would you even think it?” Her voice is thick. “You’re not a monster at all.”

Shiro turns to face her, and freezes at the look of distress on her face. She’s wringing her blanket in her fists. He curses under his breath and shuffles up the bed to sit next to her.

His words get stuck in his throat. There’s no air to move them through. The room spins before his eyes and he has to squeeze them shut and grip the bed to keep himself steady.

There’s no air. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He tries, feels like retching, feels his heart racing, feels like dying –

Tiny hands scramble over his arms and shoulders, resting on his chin and pulling his head up. There’s a roar in his ears, but over it, he can hear an insistent litany of his name – Shiro.

His eyes snap open and he jerks free from her grasp, coughing and dry heaving off the side of the bed.

“Shiro?” Pidge nearly whispers, gently resting a hand on his back.

He shudders and collects himself as much as he can, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. With a heavy thud, he falls back across the bed. His shoulders land on her feet.

“Katie,” he sighs. He’s so out of breath that he can’t say anything else.

Pidge tugs on him until he rolls over and lays his head on her waist. “Shiro, what happened? Are you okay?”

Well, no, he’s obviously not, because he’s a mess. And she just trusts him so implicitly that she doesn’t even care. She doesn’t care that he’s killed so many people, that he’s a monster, a broken wreck of a man, that he’ll never be free from the Galra, that –

“Shiro,” she growls.

He’s shaking again.

“Pidge, I don’t deserve this.”

“Of course you don’t! No one deserves this!”

“No, I-I mean,” he stammers, unusually flustered, “I mean you. Your trust.”

His face is buried in her shirt, but he can feel the scorn in her gaze.

“Well that’s so completely wrong that it crosses over into idiot status. You’re an idiot, Shiro.” Her hands smooth his hair, and he chokes up. “I’m the asshole here. I don’t deserve you. And... well I should really apologize to Keith, too, and...”

“No. It’s not even close. I was a monster in the Arena. I killed people, Pidge. In cold blood.” And with that, it all starts spilling out: Everything Sendak said to him, every fractured memory he has from his time as Champion, everything he’s afraid of, everything he’s ashamed of. He’s sure half of it is a garbled, incoherent mess, but he can’t stop.

By the end of it, he’s more exhausted than he can actually feel, sobbing into her chest and clutching at her like a lifeline, and she’s cradling him in her arms like something fragile and precious.

Shiro jerks awake with a start, unfamiliar sounds and scents around him. Something is pinning him down, and a feral snarl flits across his face before he realizes where he is.

This is Pidge’s room. His head is on her stomach, and her arms are draped over his shoulders. He must have passed out, but it’s okay. He’s safe here.

It jolts through him like electricity. He... he’s safe again. He breathes out, slowly, and folds his hands under his chin. Safe.

Pidge scoffs. She’s too groggy for it to sound as sharp as usual.

“Good morning, sunshine.” She briefly tightens her hold on him, almost like a hug.

He gives her a guilty half-smile. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s fine.” She tries to shrug, but her shirt is pulled too tight under his weight for her shoulders to really move. “I was an ass and kept you up late because of it, so it balances out.”

Shiro knows he should go back to his room in case someone comes looking for him. Or maybe he should get an early start on the day. And he will, soon.

But for now, he sighs and tucks his head against her ribs a moment longer.

Pidge pats his shoulders and takes a shaky breath. “I... I can’t do anything for my dad and brother yet, but... you’re kind of my family, too. And I...”

Shiro looks up at her, then wiggles his arms around her ribs and squeezes until she coughs. He smiles, and she laughs.

“We’ll be okay, right?” Her voice is so small, but so hopeful. “We’ll make it?”

“We will.”

And for the first time in over a year, he believes it.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on these other sites:
> 
> tumblr: amairawrites  
> pillowfort: amaira  
> twitter (new!): @amairawrites1


End file.
